Chances are, you love the recordable CD drives in your office.
But if you have a lot of data to juggle, it's time to add a
recordable DVD drive to the lineup-or, even better, a new PC with
one already installed.

A DVD disc holds almost 15 times the data of a CD-a capacity
more in tune with today's fat graphical applications and jumbo
fixed-disk drives. Plus, all DVD recordable drives will read your
CD-ROMs, and some will burn CDs, too.

True, DVD-drive makers are still squabbling over which recording
standards you should use, but early adoption could save you money
in disc-based PC backup, data archiving, and distribution of
self-produced training films, manuals and portable desktop
presentations.

"When you're dealing with large files, it justifies
taking a chance on DVD," says Karl Gretton of CivicLife.com, a
Web software design firm. His company uses DVD discs to back up,
archive and distribute most kinds of computer files and projects
generated in its Toronto and Redwood City, California, offices.

If you've bought one of those hugely popular CD-RW drives,
chances are it's capable of playing read-only DVD discs as
well. Mary Craig, a principal analyst at Gartner Dataquest, reports
those combo players are replacing the CD-only recorders and
building an audience for DVD output. CD-RW will be king for quite a
while, she says, but shipments of recordable DVD drives will more
than double next year to 2.13 million and hit 14.5 million in 2005.
At $600 to $800, almost any business can afford its own DVD
recordable drive.

Three rewritable DVD formats are competing for your dollar:
DVD-RAM, DVD-RW and DVD+RW. All write 4.7GB on one side or 9.4GB on
both sides of a single disc, and all of them can master the
"general use" write-once DVD-R format that can be read by
any DVD player.

Take Your Pick

Panasonic is the champion of the DVD-RAM standard, which is also
currently supported by Hitachi, Samsung and Toshiba. Panasonic
claims there are already more than 2 million DVD-RAM drives in
offices worldwide.

A recordable DVD-RAM drive works much like your hard drive (only
slower), allowing random access to all the data on a removable disc
that you can overwrite 100,000 times. With a DVD-RAM drive and the
right software, you can take a quick snapshot of all or part of
most PC hard drives-fitting the critical data directories of even
one of today's multigigabyte hard drives onto a long-lived
DVD-RAM disc. That's a pretty good alternative to spending
hours transferring data to magnetic tape, which can stretch, age
and demagnetize and doesn't offer random access.

QPS and other labels sell external FireWire and USB
2.0 versions of both of those drives for about $699. But you may
need to add an interface card as well.

An easy option: Get Pioneer's DVD-RW
drive packaged in the Apple Power Mac G4-733, Compaq Presario 7000
or Sony VAIO.

Panasonic's newest drive, the DVDBurner, also produces DVD-R
(write-once) discs, which helps deflect the main criticism of
DVD-RAM-that most legacy DVD-ROM players can't read the format.
All but the oldest can access DVD-R discs, which, at $10 each, are
about one-third the price of DVD-RAM media and provide 100 years of
data integrity. Of course, you still have to manage two different
kinds of media, and although the DVDBurner can read CDs, it
can't record them.

The transition from old to new is smoother with the DVD-RW
recorders. In addition to DVD-RW and DVD-R formats, Pioneer's
new DVR-A03 DVD-R/CD-RW will burn CD-RW and CD-R discs that cost
under a buck and can be read by all CD players.

Discs are limited to 1,000 rewrites, but that's about 10
times the number backup tapes can survive. DVD-RAM is still the
better choice for data backup, because a DVD-RW drive will take
twice as long to access files and doesn't manage physical
defects on discs as easily. Still, DVD-RW is better than tape.

The last recordable type to consider is DVD+RW, which claims
even greater backward compatibility with older players in all
recording modes. That remains to be seen-at press time, DVD+RW
drives were announced but not shipping. Hewlett-Packard plans to
ship its DVD+RW drives in some PC models this fall.

Confused? Who wouldn't be? The three-way turf battle has
inhibited the spread of DVD recordables (as has competition from
the popular CD-RW drives). But don't let the hullabaloo scare
you away from taking care of business. Gretton figures it takes him
just six weeks to recoup the price of a new DVD drive in
productivity gains.

Sure, you could save money and get a snazzier drive if you hold
off until next year to buy. But that's true of every PC
product. You're not going to quit buying PCs until Intel stops
one-upping them with new processors, are you?